Is the fear of being labelled a racist stifling the debate over unaffordable housing?

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The debate over who or what is responsible for Vancouver’s sky-high housing prices has focused on everything from millionaire migrants to shadowy practices by local realtors, but one high-profile critic believes the fear of being labelled a racist is preventing an open conversation about the issue.

The NDP’s David Eby says there has been a reluctance to talk about who is benefiting from our immigration practices.

“It’s a sensitive issue. If you raise issues around immigration, people are very understandably nervous given our history of racism here in the Lower Mainland, especially anti-Asian racism,” he tells NEWS 1130.

To be clear, the Vancouver-Point Grey MLA believes immigration is a good thing, recently telling an emergency meeting on housing affordability in Vancouver, “that we have every reason to welcome immigration from China and all over the world; it’s what built British Columbia.”

However, Eby believes there has been silence around what he calls “two streams” of immigration.

“There are refugees and people who wait in line in the immigration queue and then there are people who buy their way in,” he says.

“We need to be able to distinguish between being ‘pro-immigration’ while being concerned about people who buy their way to the front of the line and being ‘anti-immigration.’ Those are two very different positions.

Eby adds the people who want to shut down the conversation are the ones who are profiting from bringing the world’s super-rich to Vancouver. “And they’re doing that by calling the conversation racist.”

Shadow flipping

Vancouver-area realtors are also firing back at Premier Christy Clark’s plan to curtail so-called shadow flipping.

In a letter to the premier, Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver president Darcy McLeod says the premier is wrong to pre-empt the Real Estate Council’s independent review into the process.

Portions of the letter are posted REW.ca.

In his letter sent on behalf of more than 12,000 realtors, McLeod says the term shadow flipping was invented by the media to inflame public opinion. The industry term for it is ‘assignment sales.’

He’s worried bad press will lead to unnecessary changes because the hot market is only part of a cycle and that any alteration to the laws would be premature because things will eventually cool off, while any legislation itself would be permanent.

Real estate expert Tsur Somerville with UBC’s Sauder School of Business says the language in the letter was quite aggressive.

He sees McLeod’s point but says public perception is also important, something realtors sometimes don’t take into account.

“Shadow flipping is not a big issue. It doesn’t affect a lot of properties, it certainly doesn’t drive up prices, it’s a result of rapid price appreciation, but having said that, there’s a lot to be said for clarity and confidence in the market. The realtors weren’t being very proactive about it. That’s why it fell on the province.”